FMC Carswell warden Jody Upton recommended it. She did so based on Lynne's condition. According to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Lynne "meets every legal, rational and humane criterion for" it.

Denial exceeds cruel and unusual punishment. It's a death sentence. FMC Carswell's a death camp. Terminally ill political prisoners languish there to die.

Activist Ralph Schoenman circulated urgent news on what happened. He called denying Lynne "worthy of Kafka."

Koeltl's ruling, he said, "ignored the falsification of the medical record documented in the recommendation of Compassionate Release for Lynne Stewart made months before by the Warden of Carswell Federal Prison."

He "ignored the Defense Brief. He chose not to address its citation of the falsification of the medical evidence contained in the Denial of Compassionate Release by Charles E. Samuels, Jr. Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons."

"He did not reference the Defense documentation of the violation of the Separation of Powers and habeas corpus rights fundamental to the US Constitution."

He "ignored Defense documentation in its Brief of the testimony before Congress of Michael Horowitz, Inspector General of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on the refusal of the Bureau of Prisons to recommend release for prisoners facing catastrophic disease in order to allow medical care that would enable them to survive."

"He ignored the evidence documented by Human Rights Watch that the Bureau of prisons - had arrogated to itself the authority to refuse Compassionate Release unless a prisoner is on the verge of death - thus releasing them not for medical care that could save their lives, but solely to be placed in a coffin."

In his book "Race to Incarcerate," Marc Mauer focuses on America's obsession with imprisonment, punishment, and commodifying prisoners.

It's done to fill beds. It targets society's most vulnerable. It does so against people of color.

It's against activists supporting human and civil rights, ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and political, economic and social equality across gender and color lines.

Democracy exists in name only. Rule of law principles don't matter. Justice is a four-letter word. It's systematically denied.

Thousands of innocent victims face long prison terms. They languish under cruel and inhumane conditions.

Some die in prison. Others endure years of solitary confinement, poor medical care, other forms of abuse, and perfunctory parole hearings rigged to refuse.

Incarceration's a system of social control. Wrongful imprisonment killed Marilyn Buck. She served 25 years of an 80 year sentence.

She did so for opposing US imperialism and racial injustice. On July 15, 2010, she was released. Three weeks later she was dead.

Months earlier, she was diagnosed with uterine sarcoma. It's a rare aggressive cancer.

She was denied proper treatment. She was kept imprisoned until it was too late to save her. Political Washington wanted her dead.

She called prisons warehouses to "disappear the unacceptable." They "deprive their captives of their liberties (and) human agency."

They "punish." They "stigmatize prisoners through moralistic denunciations and indictment based on bad genes."